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Coaching Your Team as a Collective Makes It Stronger
Summary
Team coaching is an emerging practice that focuses on the collective impact of employees rather than individual performance. The article outlines three key techniques of team coaching: problem-based coaching, using questions to guide team members, and treating successes and failures as opportunities to learn. With team coaching, leaders can create an environment of agency and accountability, accelerate learning, increase confidence, and foster team spirit. This approach can help teams learn how to deliver results in shorter cycles and adapt quickly to changing demands.
Q&As
What is team coaching and what role does it play in team performance?
Team coaching is a practice that shifts the focus from individual performance to collective impact. In this environment, a leader’s role is to support the team as an organic unit, providing support and guidance, setting routines and practices, and creating constant opportunities for group learning.
What are the three key tools and techniques of team coaching?
The three key tools and techniques of team coaching are problem-based coaching, the coach, don't tell approach, and treating both successes and failures as opportunities to learn.
How does the problem-based coaching technique work?
The problem-based coaching technique encourages team members to go beyond their roles and understand one another’s strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations. Leaders treat problems and challenges as opportunities for real-world learning and growth that all team members can — and have to — take advantage of.
What benefits are there to employing the coach, don't tell approach?
The benefits of employing the coach, don't tell approach are that it focuses the whole team on exploring issues more thoroughly, possibly unearthing previously overlooked errors and incorrect assumptions, and it deepens team learning around specific customer challenges.
What are the advantages of treating both successes and failures as opportunities to learn?
The advantages of treating both successes and failures as opportunities to learn are that it transforms the work dynamic, encourages team members to test the boundaries of what’s possible, to challenge assumptions, and to admit when things have gone wrong, and it enables faster and cheaper failures, and bigger breakthroughs.
AI Comments
đź‘Ť This article offers great insight into the benefits of team coaching as opposed to individual coaching. It provides a great list of tools and techniques that can be used to help foster accelerated learning and successful outcomes.
đź‘Ž This article is very long and can be hard to follow. It also lacks concrete examples of how to implement the techniques discussed.
AI Discussion
Me: It's about how coaches can help teams be more effective by providing support and guidance, setting routines and practices, and creating opportunities for group learning.
Friend: That's interesting. What implications does it have?
Me: Well, it suggests that coaches should focus on providing support to teams rather than individual employees, and that they should use problem-based coaching, coach rather than tell, and treat both successes and failures as opportunities to learn. It also suggests that team members should be given the chance to contribute and that they should be encouraged to ask the question "Why?" in order to uncover details and patterns that others may be blind to. Ultimately, it suggests that teams can benefit from a shift in focus from individual performance to collective impact.
Action items
- Create a team-coaching environment that focuses on collective impact rather than individual performance.
- Utilize problem-based coaching to provide real-world learning and growth opportunities for team members.
- Employ a Socratic-method of teaching to prompt insights and shift thinking, and encourage team members to ask “Why?” to uncover details and patterns of behavior.
Technical terms
- Coaching
- A practice of providing guidance and support to individuals or teams to help them reach their goals.
- Team Coaching
- A practice of providing guidance and support to teams as an organic unit, providing guidance, setting routines and practices, and creating constant opportunities for group learning.
- Problem-based Coaching
- A leadership technique that uses questions, not answers, to invite and shape how team members understand situations and solve problems.
- After-action Review (AAR)
- A process conducted by the U.S. Special Forces after every mission, during which team members are invited to provide their perspective on everything that went right and wrong, without assigning any blame.
- Pre-action Review (PAR)
- A process conducted by the U.S. Special Forces before their next mission, during which they consider how what they’ve learned in previous AARs might be applied to the new mission.